


after

by einsKai



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Afterlife, Cuddles, It´s cute I promise, M/M, Multi, OT3, Regaining Memories, They´re dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 04:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10481745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/einsKai/pseuds/einsKai
Summary: ”How could I let me get killed? Now nobody´s going to follow the rules anymore!"Ishimaru is dead.Who will he meet in the afterlife?(Spoiler: It´s Chihiro and Mondo, surprise, surprise)





	

“How could I have been so dumb?!“, Ishimaru screamed, buried his face in his hands. ”How could I let me get killed? Now nobody´s going to follow the rules anymore! And who´ll take care of Alter Ego?!”

He calmed down after a while and looked around for a bit. He was kneeling in a white room, a corridor enlightened in pure white light. He looked around to find an exit to the room but if there was one he couldn´t see it. The room was empty of anything, no furniture, no windows, no doors – there wasn´t even a source to the blinding brightness that was the light.

Ishimaru stood up and began to walk down the corridor, there was nothing else he could do anyway – he was dead after all, wasn´t he?

When he reached the end of the corridor he almost slammed into the wall, because he didn´t see it coming. He didn´t even have a shadow in this room, it was too bright. Mondo would´ve laughed at him, he thought, a bitter taste in his mouth. But Mondo was dead. And so was he. Would they be able to meet? This was the afterlife, right? But would Mondo be in the same place as him, after everything he did? Were there even different places? Was Chihiro here as well? And Kuwata, Maizono, Enoshima? 

He stood in front of this white wall, no trace of an exit here either. Frustrated he let out a cry and slid down the wall. His back rested against the cool material, was it stone, plastic, wood? He couldn´t tell, he just knew he was tired of walking around this corridor, he was tired of not knowing what to do, and he was tired of being alone.

He fell into a semi-sleep, leaning against that wall. He sat there, in the absolute calm, no noise disturbed the heavy quiet, laying over the place like a blanket.

Steps awoke him. He blinked up into the light, red eyes full of confusion, when he took in the greens and browns of Chihiro´s dress, the big eyes blinking at him and then the voice, usually so reserved and shy, screaming: ”Mondo! I found him, Mondo! Taka is here!”

Taka, hah. It felt like ages had passed since he told everyone to call him Taka. But yes, it felt right, being called that. It also felt right, being scooped up in Mondo’s arms, pressed against his broad chest. He smiled and pressed his face against Mondo, inhaling his scent. He fell asleep for real this time.

When he woke up, he felt warmth surrounding him. He discovered a soft mattress and a big blanket around him, in an equally big bed. He sat up, taking the room in. It was a relatively simple room, and the only furniture was the gigantic bed, three drawers and a mirror hanging on the wall. Oh no, back there was a closet, crammed into a corner. A window showed the view of a garden, full of flowers, blooming apple and cherry trees and a small greenhouse, probably filled to the brim with vegetables. He felt the desire to sit in that garden, stare at the flowers and read a good book, while drinking a nice cup of tea.

Just as he wanted to stand up the door slowly opened and Chihiro peaked inside. Seeing him his eyes widened and he hurried to his side and almost crushed him in a surprisingly strong hug.

Instinctively he wrapped his arms around the smaller boy. Chihiro sobbed and hugged him harder. ”Hey, don´t cry, please!”, Ishimaru begged him, not really knowing how to comfort a crying person.  
“It´s fine”, Chihiro sniffled, ”It´s okay, I’m just happy to see you. And sad to see you, you´re dead, right?” He nodded: ”I guess I am, but so are you.” ”Mondo was so worried about you!” ”He was?” “Yes! He didn´t sleep for days.” Ishimaru furrowed his brows. “He should take care of himself better! Enough sleep is of vital importance for a healthy body!” “I think it was a mix of feeling guilty for killing me and being worried for you”, Chihiro said, lowering his gaze to the floor.

Ishimaru´s fist curled over his heart, clutched the fabric of his uniform. His eyes filled with tears that dripped onto his trousers and Chihiro´s hands that tried to wipe them off his face.

“Chihiro”, Ishimaru pressed, his voice strained with his tears, “do you forgive him?” “Yes, of course I do”, Chihiro whispered, “how could I not?”

“I´d understand if you didn´t”, another voice reached their ears.

“Mondo!” “Kyoudai!”, they greeted the biker that sat down on the bed, next to Ishimaru.

“So you´re dead too now?”, he asked, “congratulations for that.” Ishimaru nodded: “Guess I am. I feel bad for leaving the others behind.” “How did you…”, Mondo gestured towards him awkwardly, he didn´t want to ask the question directly. It really was a sensitive one, if you thought about it. “Yamada crushed my skull with a hammer. I didn´t think he´d become a murderer…”

Chihiro sighed with relief. “So you didn´t kill anyone?” Mondo also looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders: “Or yourself.”

“You thought I´d kill myself?!”, Ishimaru was quite offended, “You´re underestimating my sense of responsibility!”

“That´s not it, Taka, really. If you knew what we know… you´d understand”, Chihiro said.

“You know something?” “Yes. Taka, please don´t freak out and listen to us.” “We found out how to get our damn memories back.” “What memories?” “The ones that were stolen by the fucking mastermind.”

Ishimaru thought about that for a while. “So you remember what happened to us?” “Yes! Taka, we´ve been a class for over a year and then something! We had so much fun together… Mondo and you hated each other at first, but you became…”, Mondo interrupted Chihiro. ”You don´t have to tell him. He should get his own memories back on his own. Also his point of view is probably pretty different from yours.” “You´re right”, Chihiro said, taking his hand into his, and stroking it with his thumb.

Ishimaru felt the blood rise to his face, seeing this intimate gesture. He didn´t think his friends had a relationship like that. Quickly he looked away, didn´t want to disturb this moment. He felt a pang of jealousy in his chest. He didn´t understand that. Why would he be jealous of Mondo and Chihiro? He had never wanted to be near to a person physically – at least in a romantic way. But now he craved for the touch of Chihiro´s small hand on his own, or was it Mondo’s bigger, rough hands he craved? The feeling scared him.

He cleared his throat, to break the awkward atmosphere. “What do I need to do, to regain my memories, I mean?”

Chihiro´s face lit up and he clasped his hands together. It was adorable. “You want to know? It´s really easy! You know, in this world everything you imagine just appears out of nowhere, this is how we built this house. It turned out quite nice, didn´t it? Okay, so you don´t really need to eat in here, because we´re already dead and all, but if you eat something, every memory you have ever had is restored. You remember everything, from the first moments of your life to the last, every dream, every nightmare, every argument with parents and every book you read. It´s really nice, but also painful at the same time, because while all the good things are great to remember, it´s really painful to have all the bad things in your mind all the time. I think it´s amazing!”  
Mondo let out an approving noise, but Ishimaru saw a glint of pain in his eyes. Of course, if he remembered everything, he also remembered how he killed Chihiro, and the story about his brother.  
“Alright”, he said, “give me something to eat.”

Mondo had cooked. It was an aspect of him Ishimaru didn´t know yet. The meal looked delicious; Chihiro was already eating with delight. Ishimaru paused for a moment, looked around the open kitchen, the wooden table with the three chairs, Mondo and Chihiro talking, smiling at each other – he took a bite.

It was the best food he had ever had.

His friends looked at him, the tears dripping from his face onto the table. A sob escaped him and he started to cry.

Mondo and Chihiro were at his side in an instant gripping his hand and hugging his arm.

“Do you want to tell us what you remember?”

“It´s so beautiful”, Ishimaru cried, ”I remember everything.” He sobbed into Mondo’s shoulder. “I remember my mother’s face when she first saw me. I remember how I got the letter from Hope´s Peak High School. I remember how we first met each other. I remember how we got to know each other better. I remember how I fought Mondo, so he´d come to class. I fought others as well. All of us… We were friends, all of us…”

His tears wet Mondo´s shirt and it became see through.

“Chihiro told us he was male and we threw a party to thank him for trusting us so much. Genocider Syo was so happy about it…”

Chihiro smiled at the memory and raised one of his hands to stroke Taka´s hair.

“Mondo and I bonded over protecting Chihiro from bullies and guys who wanted to date him, because he was cute. We became closer, the three of us became closer. Then… everything collapsed. We locked ourselves inside the building, we… we spent a year in there, and then…”, his eyes widened, “It´s Enoshima and her sister! They´re the mastermind! They´re responsible for all of this!”

“Taka…”, Chihiro whispered softly, sadness on his face. ”We can´t help them now anyway”, Mondo said. “And you´re missing a piece. There´s something more about us, isn´t there?”

Takas eyes widened, his shocked tears dried, and he turned his head to look at Chihiro to fulfill his desperate plea.

“We´re… boyfriends? The three of us. We are together.”

Mondo’s grip on his hand tightened. His gruff voice asked: “Are you okay with that?” Ishimaru burst into tears again. He threw himself into Mondo´s arms and hugged the hell out of him. “Yes”, he said, “Yes, I´m totally fine with that!”

Chihiro´s small body pressed against Taka´s back and Mondo wrapped his arms around them. He closed his eyes, the warmth surrounding him overwhelmingly. A sob escaped him, but behind it was pure happiness.

“We love you”, Chihiro whispered, “We love you so much and we missed you equally as much and it was so difficult, because we wanted you here with us, but we didn´t want you to die, because you should live and be happy, even without us! We were so worried what would happen to you. We didn´t really want you to die, yet somehow we wanted you to. I´m so sorry, Taka!”

He patted his hands that were wrapped around his waist carefully, to assure him that everything was alright. “It´s okay”, he said, “If I was in your place I would´ve wanted me to die too. It´s because I love you. I love the two of you.”

It was not really a happy ever after for everyone, but what they had was making them happy. Even after death, they were happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> I have worked on this for a few days now and I´m really pleased with the way it turned out :D
> 
> At first I wanted to make Chihiro a trans-nonbinary character, because I really like this headcanon, but I felt like it would be overkill and not fitting, because this is very Taka-centric.
> 
> I used the nickname "Taka", even though I´m not sure if he wanted to be called that in the Japanese version or if it´s English version only? I think it´s cute, so I´ll stick with it :D
> 
> I´m very sorry to have such a tame Mondo! I just can´t cope with his way of speaking, I really tried ;;;;;;
> 
> In case you were wondering: The other dead people are also there, but not quite in the same place. Maybe they´ll meet someday!  
> And Chihiro and Mondo built their place so that Taka had a place there: The bed is big enough for three people, there are three drawers and three chairs. I thought it was adorable~
> 
> It would be very nice if someone could tell me their pairing name. they have one, right? I couldn´t find it anywhere :´(
> 
> \- Kai


End file.
